Like Mother Like Son: Murphy Brown’s Kid Makes a Big Move

Avery's unemployment begins to take its toll -- both on him and on the Murphy in the Morning team.

Having Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) as a mom casts a long shadow for her son Avery (Jake McDorman), whose attempt to follow in her footsteps may lead him into danger

Avery is at home nursing his wounds from his recent firing this week on Murphy Brown. An added pour of salt? The network replaced him with a doppelgänger who will serve as a more obedient mouthpiece for the Fox proxy, “The Wolf Network”.

With no job of his own to do, Avery drops in on his mom’s. But the well-seasoned team doesn’t need his opinion behind the scenes, and no new network will hire him since he trashed the Wolf Network on the air. He stood up for his values by quitting, but now his reputation is the guy who went “bonkers” during his show.

Murphy’s team takes mercy on Avery and invites him over to their table to reminisce about the “good old days” of journalism. They see an increasingly connected world taking its toll on the old reporting ways. Rather than having boots on the ground, everything is done by satellite. The gang laments the loss of getting up close and personal with the communities surrounding their stories. And Avery relates to this — in fact his canceled show was all about traveling to different communities around the country and talking to regular people in person.

So it comes as no surprise when Avery, at his wit’s end, decides to pack a bag and go to Afghanistan to find a source for his mother’s show. “I need to do this,” he adamantly tells Murphy. There’s an interesting dichotomy within Avery’s decision, one born both of loyalty to his mother (he’s going out there to get a source for her) and a strong desire to strike out on his own that motivate this ending. Avery will presumably make it back all right — he’s been shown in promotional material for next week’s season finale. But his track record of renegade reporting and this impulsive move might make it difficult for him to continue in this line of work.